Schumi at the center of another controversy

Well Well Well Schumacher - Thy synonym might well be Controversy!!! i am of course referring to the last weeks' qualifying for Monaco Grand Prix....Monaco is one of the most looked forward to races in the F1 calendar every year for it is not only a street race but has one of the most picturesque surrondings for a race....Twisting and twirling through tunnels, chicanes, below mansions!!! near the mediteranean sea ....one of the most toughest circuits in the race calendar....Another reason why drivers feel that a pole position at Monaco is as good as winning the race (Which proved right this year too!)....

Schumi towards the dying seconds of the qualifying session (when he was leading on the times set and was going for another flying lap; And Alonso was supposedly two hundredths of a second below his time at the Second Intermediate and behind schumi) stalled the car as he lost control on a fast maneouvre of a sharp curve....This brought all the cars behind him to stall and lose their flying laps and teh session to get over...

There were Boos all around calling for Ferrari and Schumi's Head.....That it was a disgrace for a sport to have such a dirty legend......Flavio Briatore, the manager who first saw Schumi win his first F1 Championship and the currrent boss of the Renault team, opined that "He (Schumi) is taking everybody for a ride" or something like that....Then you had every driver calling for him to be abandoned from the sport ....Alonso, the current leader in the championship race, refused to comment....while Montoya, Coulthard, Villeneuve, Kimi also came up with their versions.....

This hype and furore is nothing new to Schumi for his various moves in the past - Some of the renowned ones include....(a)Schumi crashing into Damon Hill to winning his 94 Chamiopnship (1st world Chamiponship).....I wonder what Flavio Briatore commented when his champ won that race....(b) Schumacher trying to crash into Villeneuve in the last race in 97 championship and hitting the sidewall. Simultaneously he was stripped off his second position in the championship....(c)When he overtook Barrichello in the last corner of the Belgium Grand Prix in the 2003 season following Ferrari's unwritten policy of the second driver to always make way for Schumi in a race

Hey but i have some questions for these guys!!! (Not only Coz i am a Schumi Fan)

1) Would they have questioned if it was any other driver? Mistakes do happen when you are racing at such high speeds....Some say a seven time world champion could not have done such an elementary mistake....Hey is he not human!!! he did not even know he was leading the timing charts as he did not have radio contact at that point...

2) What credibility do ppl like Montoya, Coulthard, Briatore and Villeneuve have to question Schumi ???
Montoya that half mad colombian who crashes into others for he has very little patience and a very small brain that rarely works in a race...Villeneuve, the most spectacular non performer (leaving alone the 97 season) that has ever graced the sport and driven a car for more than a decade....How many times has he spoiled every driver's flying lap in qualifying in the 90s.....The world champ (of 97) is credited with the most spins in a race that could have ever been....Coulthard the b@$tard who rammed into Schumi in 1998 when Schumi was just six points behind coulthards teammate Hakkinen in the championships and had six races to go ..... That chap calling schumi a person without integrity....

But despite all this the Champ that he is Schumi started from the p22 (last position in the race grid) and finished a creditable 5th in the race....That too in a track where overtaking is almost next to impossible.....That speaks about the quality of the driver on the racing circuit....That too from the oldest driver on the circuit....Hats off to the Hero!!!Schumi is now 21 points behind Alonso but watch out the sleeping giant has been aroused.....With 12 races to go it aint over till its over....

Kolkota – The City of Joy

Well yesterday I was in Kolkota (Calcutta of yesteryears) on an official trip and this happened to be my third trip to this rather sleepy city (or is it???). It definitely has a populace which has a kind of laidback attitude to how they lead their life (or so I feel cos I am in Mumbai – Bombay of yesteryears – the city with a mechanical life). The city, like most cities in India, has some its splendid monuments and tourist spots in the South while the North as usual has a very dirty look and feel to it.

The first time I was in Kolkota (some ten years back) I was overawed by the engineering of the Howrah bridge….The enormity of the structure and the jetties flowing beneath the bridge in the waters of Hoogly…..Oh that was a sight…..But right beside it I also saw one of the most dirty locales anywhere in the world….. This time around when I went to Strand Road on an official meeting (very near Howrah) I just wanted to check how the place looked…..Hey it bloody well hasn’t changed…..Whether for the Good I don’t know…..but people out there seems to be very oblivious of the filth among which they live in…..

Then I drifted to do more official work and for lunch I went to this lovely little restaurant called Moulin Rouge in Park Street (the most lively road In Kolkota) with a batchmate of mine – Debu….It was great to meet him after a longtime and we had a nice cozy lunch at that restaurant. This restaurant supposedly had at one point in time been the most visited night clubs in Kolkota in fifties or so ppl tell me…..It also was a part of the famous caberae number of Rekha in the recent movie Parineeta. That movie was supposedly based on like in Cal in 1960s….Hey it has not changed so much after that….

Then post lunch I had an hour and a half to kill and just a little walk outside on Park Street I found Oxford Bookstore. At Oxford for the first time a book’s cover caught my attention with its name – “Everything that you wanted to know about the Simple Theory of Relativity E=mc 2 and were afraid to ask”…. I read the book for about an hour and I was so immersed that I felt I needed to buy this book…..It cost me INR 150 (INR 100 higher than what I normally pay for a book) but It is worth it….. It describes about various things that I feared reading in Physics……Oh I repent why I did not choose Physics……I have finished only 30 pages of the book and hey its just too good…..The language in the book is so laymen language that I thoroughly enjoyed it…..Must go through it fully as it is very interesting….

Then I drifted back for some long official work. In the meanwhile it was pouring in Kolkota (the first showers of the monsoon) and how people welcomed it…..I felt I had brought the showers to the City of Joy :- ) . In the evening I met with Ajay, an ex-colleague of mine at office, in Hyatt at salt lake in kolkota. Salt lake is a beautiful locale in Kolkota near the airport and houses the Salt lake stadium and a lot of other beautiful scenery. The chat at the coffee house was nice as we caught upon a lot of stuff on each others work atmosphere and also recalled the last one years’ work experience at the office. It was a good evening drink we had…the mango squash was too good….

Then came the most hated part of the day…..My flight back to Mumbai…..I expected to reach in three hours including the normal one hour the flights hover around the destination for their turn to be allowed to land…….But hey the Indian airport infrastructure was much worse….I hovered around for an hour and a half and to top it there was no bloody Bus coach to take us from the flight to the terminal…..We waited for another thirty minutes and then got to the terminal…..The four hour ordeal was over…..

Well Kolkota despite being sleepy and laidback had its own charm….The city is seeing a lot of development recently under the CM Mr.Buddhadeb Bhattacharya……Some changes that I coul really witness were the number of malls, the science city, the IT offices and the flyovers have started dotting the landscapes of the sleepy city….Maybe the city wishes to reclaim its lost glory as the primary business center in India.